Doing well, doing good

Ministry: One of America's most innovative churches looks conventional at first glance. But its practice of ministry evangelism serves the community and provides all the indicators of a healthy, growing church | Marvin Olasky

LEESBURG, Fla. -- Alfred Hitchcock directed films in which terror emerged from thoroughly conventional surroundings: a motel shower, a crop-dusted field, a row of birds on a telephone wire. But Christians from the Gospel writers through Walker Percy have shown how goodness also can leap out of stables, suburbia, and other unexceptional surroundings.

Located about an hour's drive northwest of Orlando on a main street that also boasts a McDonald's, Subway sandwich shop, and Ace hardware, the First Baptist Church of Leesburg (pop. 15,596) sports a standard denominational look: columned portico, rising steeple, and lots of people, with an average attendance of 2,200 during the winter and 1,400 during the summer. During services the words of praise songs and hymns flash onto huge screens at the front of the sanctuary while a song leader directs a robed choir.